Conflict of interest

11Mar10

There are times when we gamers do things to ourselves that any normal person would shake their head and walk away at.. This is my little moment…

Feb 1st, I ordered a new computer from Dell so that I could give my old HP some much needed rest, it’s ancient in computer terms. P4 2ghz system, 512Mb ram, 256Mb video card (AGP) and the HDD is only 40G and getting quite full.

I had ordered a system that would blow this out of the water without even noticing it was there, but is still on the low end side compared to the bleeding edge of computing.. But hey, I have a budget to work with and got the best I thought I could get. Intel Core 2 Duo (2.8GHZ dual core proc), 3GB ram, a ginormous hdd (500gb or so i think) and a 512BM Video card. Since i didn’t take one of the off the shelf packages, (I did upgrade the proc and memory slightly) their website said that it would be delivered around march 1st. OK, I can live with that….

about Feb 18th or so, I get an email from them that the pc build has been delayed to March 8th. Ok, not happy with this, but can live with it..

March 3rd I get a call from them, it has been delayed to the 15th. /frown alright, as long as it gets here. They had to call because by law they have to get permission to continue if delayed more than once. I also received an email notice that it was delayed and i needed to contact them. (dated the same day as the call I received.) I ignored that because of the call. (*** Mistake ***)

I’m rocking along around the 9th and get an email from dell saying my order has been cancelled, needless to say the brown stuff hit the rotating blades, and my BP spiked. After getting calmed down (2 or 3 days later) I send them an email reply, letting them know that I had responded to their call and didn’t feel the need to respond to an email on the same day.

Their helpful service coordinators on the phone call i placed next put me on hold and after 15 minutes I lost it. I sent another email reply telling them that I had changed my mind and they could leave the order cancelled, I was taking my business elsewhere.

I got a reply to that message asking for clarification, that they were not certain what my intent was with the previous message. I was in meltdown stage there and responded to them one last time. I told them that I did not realize they were illiterate as well as incompetent. and that it doesn’t get any clearer than “leave the order cancelled”

Well, I contacted one of my vendors from where I work, (i’m in IT after all, i should use my contacts and network to the betterment of all right?) I had my guy put together a similar system (1gb less ram, and a smaller hard drive, but a 1GB video card instead) for a comparable price (roughly 900 for everything) and got the order placed.

Everything arrived today from my new order, I’m happier than a hound dog in a hubcap factory. I can install wow on a new system with a killer video card. Gone will be some of the problems i was encountering with performance. (i hope)

Here’s the conflict.. In my computer room is also a playstation 3, and last night, I picked up Final Fantasy 13, which has been out only a few days…..

I am now torn between what I will play this weekend and most of next week while I am moderately free of wife aggro. She and the kids are going out of town for a spring break trip, I have to stay home and work..

I booted up the game last night after the kids were in bed, the game seems to be an improvement over FF12 so far. (10-2 and 12 being the only non-mmo ff’s i haven’t beaten yet, I couldn’t get into 12.)

I will probably have some experiences to share (wow related) but, time to crash for now.

Later

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I’m impressed you had WoW installed on a pc with a 40 gb HD, especially considering the game takes nearly half of that! To upgrade to Wrath (late starter) on my laptop with 60 gb, i had to delete some programs and music.

I upgraded my main laptop in December and went with HP. I wanted to go with Dell, but their i7 systems were several hundred more than HPs. I did have to send it in for repairs though – the touchpad didn’t work. Which is kind of stupid because I don’t use touchpads! Still, didn’t want to get out of warranty with it broken.

That will be an amazing upgrade! Now you’ll see what you’ve been missing 😀

I don’t think you reacted to Dell in a way that most other people wouldn’t have, gamer or not. Seems like you got a better system built in the end, shame you didn’t think to go there first!

I’m guessing if you go down the FF13 route this weekend then you’ll be lost to the world for next week anyway :p
I’ve never actually got into any of the FF games but my brother and some friends at work play them and typically play them solid until completion.

Along with my computer, was a happauge tv capture stick (capture card on a usb stick) that I hooked the AV jacks of my playstation into, it eventually worked, but.. there’s about a 7 second lag between my motions on the controller and what comes through the software to the monitor.

Gonna have to put a TV back in there. so.. didn’t get my FF13 fix this weekend.. 😦

My main problem is them (dell) needing to take a month and a half to build a computer. I do that day in day out. The most lengthy part of the process is installing the OS, and even that can be done from a custom image ghosted onto a drive. I know they are churning out several hundred units a day, maybe several thousand per day. but seriously? over 1month is a ridiculous wait time. They didn’t even communicate the reason for the delays, if it had been something like, “We are waiting on a backorder of the X class processor, We expect them in on Y day, but could expedite your order if you wanted to upgrade to Z class processor.” That’s salesmanship and customer service, had I been offered that as an option i would likely have said upgrade me to the quadcore please, it’s not that much more and I want it sooner rather than later.. Person to person contact is important in business. Automated calls and generic emails make for a poor customer experience.

I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about the customer experience, speaking as an IT professional, and a former guest relations clerk at several hotels. In business, it takes years to build a reputation, seconds to lose it, and it is far easier to maintain a customer relationship than to create a new customer.

In the hotel business, as long as the requests/demands are not outlandish, we were always told to attempt to give the customer what he needs. Noisy neighbors that go bump in the night at 230am, if a room’s open offer to let them move. (unlikely that second room would have sold after that time.) Someone’s kid threw up on the bed at 730pm long after housekeeping left, take up some fresh sheets and make the bed. No, It’s not really your job to make beds, but it is your job to make your customers as happy as you can. A parent of a sick child isn’t going to care if your skill at making beds is less than optimum, as long as it’s clean and smells good they will be happy.

I totally know what you mean, I’ve been working in IT for 8 years now, more than half that time has been customer facing helpdesk/first line support. It really doesn’t take much effort to keep a customer informed properly, and even if it’s just to say “this isn’t done yet but I wanted to let you know that i’m still working on it” then in my experience the customer will be soooo much happier.